Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Review

Batman v Superman Review: Ben Affleck Is Actually The Best Part Of The Movie

Remember all that bitching and moaning about casting Ben Affleck as the caped crusader? Well, he’s the best thing about Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice — the sequel to Man of Steel, prequel to Justice League and contender for the year’s most awkward movie title.

When we meet him, Affleck’s Bruce Wayne has been in the Dark Knight business for two decades — and you can tell in his performance: He’s got an icy stare and prickly stubble, moves with a guarded hunch and looks forever impatient at cocktail parties and smackdowns. His hard shell exterior barely hides his seething rage, which, in this movie, is aimed directly and obsessively at Henry Cavill’s Superman.

While the heavyweight title fight between two iconic superheroes stinks like the desperate marketing gimmick that it is—consider it the Godzilla vs. King Kong of comic book movies— the set up for this bout is actually pretty convincing and compelling.

Director Zack Snyder and his writing team take us back to the migraine-inducing climax of Man of Steel, where the battle between Supes and Michael Shannon’s Zod grinds Metropolis to 9/11-grade pulp. Snyder took slack for leaving casualties out of the mass destruction. So he revisits the same scene in BvS’s opening, but this time with a ground zero perspective where Bruce Wayne (who has an office in Metropolis) witnesses thousands of people dying while Superman dukes it out up in the sky.

Wayne clutching a little girl in his arms during this scene is a bit much. But it does get the point across. He blames the alien for bringing a foreign war to American soil, and quickly adopts a cynical attitude reminiscent of both Bush and Trump in order to control what he deems an apocalyptic situation. That Wayne starts doing some villainous things in the process feels fitting and perfectly human. The writers didn’t even have to try to conjure their own version of the “You either die a hero” line from The Dark Knight—they did it anyway.

In the other corner, Superman gets to carry all the symbolic weight. He’s always been the ideal refugee: Arriving from another planet but ultimately adopting “the American way”. And as a stand-in for Christ, he too comes with religious baggage, which brings on-the-nose moments where his effigy gets burned and “False God” gets spray-painted on his statue.

With so much import shoved on the character, Cavill doesn’t have much room to emote. Affleck’s bristling energy makes up for that. And since the movie is opening in the midst of the Syrian refugee crisis and just days after the Brussels attacks, the hostility conjured between these superheroes feels incredibly and uncomfortably pertinent.

I’m left wondering how well BvS would have worked if it focused solely on the evocative superhero beef. Unfortunately, there’s also a twitchy and maniacal millennial named Lex Luthor that complicates things. Jesse Eisenberg does fine, lively work as Luther but he’s probably as confused about his characters obtuse motivations as we are.

Luthor’s instigating and cheerleading is used as lazy shorthand to usher along the big fight. It also cheapens the rivalry, which had enough going for itself to not warrant any assistance to get to fisticuffs. By the time Batman and Superman take their positions on opposite sides of that “v”, the intensity has been muted by Luther’s overworked plot mechanics.

And really, the fight ain’t that special. Snyder manages to include plenty of visual grace throughout the movie—a pearl necklace hanging off a gun’s hammer, for one—but he can’t seem to add anything dynamic to the blow-for-blow between Superman and an armored tank version of Batman.

Their face-off ends up being perfunctory, especially since by that point we’re anticipating the heavily forecasted arrivals of Doomsday, Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot, both striking and underused) and whatever setups are needed to lay the ground for Justice League. While aping Marvel’s business model, BvS gives in to the competition’s worst trait: Letting the franchise-building get in the way of its story.

If the chaotic last hour or so feels like a huge disappointment, it’s because there’s something genuinely engaging about the early goings. At least for a while, you forget you’re watching just another mind-numbing superhero movie; that BvS’s civic concerns are just posturing to get you to the next spinoff; and that for some reason or another you’re supposed to hate Ben Affleck.